Footage is shocking even for Starmer’s police state – but not surprising
Skwawkbox reported on Sunday that legendary Liverpool activist Audrey White and three others had been arrested for publicly opposing the Starmer regime’s decision to classify anti-genocide group Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
But new footage shows how brutal the arrest was, as the 76yo Mersey Pensioners Association head was carried bodily away:
Video: Liverpool Friends of Palestine.
Starmer’s war on the freedom of speech and rights of UK citizens – including many Jews – to protect Israel is matched by his readiness to use authoritarianism, brutality and ‘lawfare’ since he came to power, while he has protected, coddled and given immunity to Israeli war criminals.
Ms White was released on bail late on Sunday. Skwawkbox is trying to find out what impact the police violence has had on her health.
Please remember to support Skwawkbox if you can, to help ensure it can keep running. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (Skwawkbox will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount as it has to be entered by us). Alternatively, if you prefer to make a one-off or recurring donation by simple card payment, please use the form below:
Make a one-time donation
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your support is hugely appreciated.
Your support is hugely appreciated.
Your support is hugely appreciated.
DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyThanks for your solidarity so Skwawkbox can keep doing its job of inconveniencing the right and helping to build the left!
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so, but please include the donor information above – see here for more.
Our very own Gestapo!
Went on youtube a bit earlier and there was a George Galloway video near the top of the recommends (posted a couple of hours earlier), and he is REALLY on fire. Check it out:
Netanyahu has food poisoning. Pray for the bacteria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3628Zj-3qY (18mins 48secs)
It has been a long time coming but here’s some good news
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/20/government-launches-orgreave-inquiry-40-years-after-clashes-at-miners-strike
Enquiry? Nothing to see here … they’ve already destroyed the brutality evidence
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/orgreave-miners-strike-northumbria-police-31932943
Quelle suprise!
Billy no mates, slapping the metaphorical dead cat on the table at just after two in the morning.
Who would’ave thought?
Pissed the bed, did you Billy?
Yeah cos 40 years ago is really nothing to do with likud labour genocide.
From Paul Knaggs at Labour Heartlands:
When Pensioners Become Terrorists: Britain’s Descent into Authoritarian Absurdity
White’s arrest, alongside three others at a peaceful demonstration, is not some isolated anomaly; it is part of a calculated campaign to crush dissent and silence opposition to Britain’s shameful complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza. In Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, a Party that once stood for the voiceless, the real threat isn’t violence or extremism. The real threat is truth.
And the truth is this: the state is now using counterterrorism powers not to protect the public, but to protect itself, from scrutiny, from accountability, and from a growing wave of moral outrage…
Let’s be clear: Palestine Action is not ISIS. It’s not Al-Qaeda. We leave that kind of fraternisation to our Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, and his newfound champion of democracy, Ahmad al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani—the West’s favourite former jihadist, once flying the black flag of global terror. Palestine Action is a non-violent direct action network. Their real crime? Daring to expose Britain’s cosy financial and military complicity in Israel’s war machine. For that, the full weight of the state comes crashing down. Because in Starmer’s Britain, war criminals are partners, but those who call them out are the ones branded dangerous.
https://labourheartlands.com/audrey-white-arrested/
From the same article:
Let’s stop pretending this is just about Palestine. If they can brand activists targeting Elbit Systems as terrorists today, they can do the same to Just Stop Oil tomorrow. Oh, wait, they have. Or to striking workers. Or to you.
This is the neoliberal Iron Heel in motion, and once it begins its descent, it knows no natural terminus. George Orwell understood this remorseless dynamic when he wrote:
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.”
The boot that today presses upon Audrey White’s weathered shoulders seeks tomorrow to crush every voice that dares speak truth to power’s comfortable lies.
This, then, is the Britain Sir Keir Starmer is building. It is a place where the press handles him with “kid gloves,” as Audrey observed, and where Labour MPs and Party members are “intimidated by threat of suspension and expulsion for saying anything.” It is a managed, sterile space where difficult truths are not debated but proscribed, and where lifelong champions of the working class are treated as enemies of the state.
If you’re a coward, who are you going to abuse … Audrey White, or a violent mob attacking an asylum hotel? And don’t even mention tackling war criminals, they must be welcomed with open arms, and feted and protected. Hitler got to power on such….
PW, why the reluctance of calling things for what they are? Why referring to it as “Authoritarian Absurdity” when the word that should be used is Fascism?
By the way Starmer´s government isn´t descending into Fascism it is already Fascist.
You’ll have to ask Paul Knaggs about that.
No plod here…
Bastard video link didn’t show. Anyway here’s the link to the entire tale..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20n9yzxyyvo
Keir Stalin strikes again.
Keef wrong un.
I find Keir Mussolini perhaps more suitable.
Keef jong il duce.
Meanwhile, only six people have been arrested “during the latest protest outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers in Essex.
“Bottles and smoke flares were thrown towards police vehicles during the demonstration which saw more than 1,000 people gathered at the site of the Bell Hotel in Epping.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdr3716kd8mo
An illuminating compare and contrast example.
Around a thousand people involved; bottles and flares thrown at police; and only six arrests and a section 35 order.
I guess the police did not consider those inside the hotel – including the staff as well as the refugees – were insufficiently terrified?
But, what can you expect from those who gave us this:
https://sonar21.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-24.png
I wonder, do we know under what charges the 6 have been arrested? Terrorism? Shouldn’t thing so. Never mind the migrants inside the hotel must have been terrified.
The updated page from that BBC link posted above by liz3321 has this:
The six protesters have been kept in police custody:
“A 16-year-old from south London was arrested on suspicion of going equipped to cause criminal damage.
A 36-year-old man from Epping and a 47-year-old man from Waltham Abbey in Essex were arrested on suspicion of violent disorder under Section 2 of the Public Order Act.
A 51-year-old man from Epping was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder under Section 2 of the Public Order Act.
A 34-year-old man from Wickford in Essex was arrested on suspicion of breaching a Section 60AA, which was put in place to give police powers to force people to remove face coverings.
A 17-year-old man from North Weald in Essex was arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage to a vehicle.”
Though it remains to be clarified whether the 17-year-old arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage to a vehicle is the same individual seen disappearing under a police van in this video:
Hotel situation stinks. There’s footage out there of protestors being bussed by police.
NVLA – “There’s footage out there of protestors being bussed by police.
Please, could you post these links plus any further details that you have.
From KernowDamo — with Skwawkbox getting a mention:
Starmer Declared War on Dissent – And He’s Losing
A random thought:
The Terrorism Act seems to be being applied selectively in regard to these protests in that if it were being applied consistently everyone on these demonstrations would be arrested.
And from the perspective of the police this is a practical approach as well as an intimidatory tactic, as any attempt to consistently apply the approach we are witnessing would end up overwhelming the system. Attempting to arrest everyone on these demonstrations, which could number several thousand or even several hundred rather than twenty, thirty, forty or fifty, is a whole different ball game in terms of scale and practicality.
How would the system process so many at the same time? How many police would be required, and how much time and space would be needed, if everyone on a demonstration turned that approach on its head and insisted that they too be arrested the moment the police moved in to arrest anyone, from one solitary individual to a handful of all those on the demonstration?
“I am Spartacus” needs to be turned from a slogan into a tool to swamp and break the tactics being employed.
‘One arrested. All arrested!’
Dave, during Franco, Pinochet or Videla governments, most arrest didn’t happen at mass demonstrations. Because as you say they are impractical.
The way that most arrest were carry out were at home, in the middle of the night and without witnesses. Thus, I am not going to be surprised were the police to start using the same tactics here should the limited arrests prove not to be enough of a deterrent.
The Fascist found a way of dealing with the excessive number of arrests: they ensure that a lot of people disappeared, officially never arrested by the authorities. Years later in the case of Argentina somebody spoke of flights in which bodies were disposed off over the Atlantic. In the case of Spain bodies were buried on mass graves by the side of roads, to be found many years later.
I don’t believe that we are getting there yet but, walking towards it. Rabid Israel’s supporters working hand in hand with, British intelligence services that could provide them with addresses and the people to target. Thus, it would not be arrests at demonstrations but, knocks on the front door in the early night hours.
we aren’t sleepwalking into fascism … the country is rushing headlong into it.
We are already there. Have you noticed the rush of laws SINCE Parliament went into recess? No Parliamentary scrutiny. Always remember that Hitler was voted into power. I doubt that even he told quite so many lies about his intentions as Keith did, and continues to do so. Whatever he does, look for the controlling hand of Blackrock behind it.
And Yvette Cooper bringing in yet another criminal offence :
“Yvette Cooper to create new offence to cover non-terrorist planning of attacks
Home secretary says criminal offence needs to be introduced to increase police powers after Southport attack”
Presumably to hoover up anything they haven’t already covered in the already draconian legislation.
By the way Yvette, those ‘heart’ earrings aren’t fooling anyone. Yours is made of stone.
Many on the Left who were in Labour can remember what political dark arts practitioners & bullies Right Wing Lab were and they were even prepared to deliberately lose a General Election to get rid of JC and didn’t give a damn that millions of diverse working class people would suffer under Johnson & the Tories as the politically lumpen Labour Right couldn’t beat us on IDEAS!
So they are perhaps acting like they did in Labour but this time with the public and particularly to protesters.
The good news is they will be out on their arses in a few years and Labour should be finished like the Socialist Parties in France & Greece etc.
And how they are dealing with the Water Companies sums them up, instead of democratic public ownership with communities having a say via Water Users Councils they are bringing in £140b from private sector companies to profit from repairing leakages so we will have only 50% less Tory enabled raw s…. in our rivers and sea and we are supposed to be bloody grateful!
Need public ownership & a 100% target.
Loved the comment from a campaign group “They are putting lipstick on a pig!”
And with protest, we need to think smart & be careful & need every campaigner to be there to continue to fight for Palestine.
As I said to a colleague before a recent Palestine March:
“Are you sure about that placard?
We may think it’s fine but a significant number of the people policing and judging us today may be ignorant of the law? (I used more colourful language).
As per Justice Chamberlain’s recent ruling in Ammori v SSHD where he stated we still have the right to criticise Israel for what we believe is Genocide or on other breaches of international law in private conversations, in print, on social media and at protests. (July 2025).
Solidarity.
Keef’s favourite company – Blackrock – are now putting several billion into rented housing. It won’t be to help young’uns get a cheap rent either …..
The problem Bazza is which Political Party is going to re-place Labour? Do you expect the Tories, Reform or even the LibDems to undo the legislative damage? I don’t.
Blair have the opportunity to undo the harmful legislation brought forward during Thatcher’s government but, instead of getting ride of it Blair double down. Let’s us not forget under which government the Terrorism Act was brought forward.
MV within 3-4 months there will be a new Left Party involving Jeremy Corbyn & Zara Sultana to name but a few and I’m in!
We will aim to transform society to benefit diverse working class people and the
progressive middle class.
One recent poll showed that such a party would already be level with Labour and that’s before it has hundreds of thousands of members & millions in the bank to campaign with.
And that’s before we will have many passionate young people and older, very experienced campaigners who will get out there and engage with and try to politicise the masses.
Exciting times are back on, part two.
Bring it on!
Bazza, I pray for you to be right. However, I don’t believe it would happen: Corbyn was always a reluctant leader, plus Corbyn is already 76 years old and will be pushing 80 at the next GE.
Thus, somehow I believe it is wishful thinking from the part of Zarah Sultana that Corbyn will agreed to lead a new political party with her.
Moreover, Zarah Sultana cannot afford to wait 3-4 months in the wilderness. The new Party needs to be launch before Labour Conference due to start on the 28th September, to have credibility with the wider electorate.
My fear for Corbyn is that he would go the same way as JFK, and by the same people (or at least their successors).